Mapping the Terrain of Moral Suffering

ABSTRACT

This essay explores what to make of the various kinds of moral distress and moral injury increasingly discussed in multiple disciplines and fields of work. It argues for transdisciplinary cooperation and inquiry and proposes a common name “moral suffering” to embrace the diversity of morally fracturing experiences that negatively impact those in health care and other helping professions. The authors offer important insights into the phenomenological relationship between moral conscience and traumatic experience, presenting questions and offering a possible hypothesis for those who want to pursue this discussion further. The essay reviews the diversity of theories regarding moral distress and moral injury advanced by health-care researchers, military clinicians, and educators. It names questions that transdisciplinary engagement can help address, such as what do the disciplines of health humanities, psychology, and education have to teach each other about prevention of moral harm and the healing of invisible wounds?